Murder at Ford's Theatre by Margaret Truman Page A

a padded gymnast’s pommel horse, crossed his arms, and fixed Cole in a practiced hard stare. “Okay,” he said, “we’ve got the silly answers out of the way. Now we get serious. When did you last see Nadia Zarinski?”
    The big smile accompanied, “A few days ago.”
    “Over the weekend,” Klayman said, his smile considerably smaller.
    A nod.
    “You have a fight?”
    “A fight? No. We never fought. We got along.”
    “What night?”
    “Huh?”
    “What night over the weekend did you spend time with her?”
    “Saturday.”
    “You went to the movies?”
    Cole shook his large head. “No, we . . . ah, come on, do I have to get into this?”
    “Yeah, you do.”
    Cole had stopped perspiring. Now, the sweat came again, and Klayman enjoyed it. It wasn’t something he openly bragged about, but being a detective—being in charge and watching people squirm because of that reality—gave him at times a certain pleasure. He was investigating a murder, which made his questions a lot more important than anything Cole might be thinking or feeling at that moment. As far as Klayman knew, he was asking questions of the person who’d killed Nadia Zarinski, and he wasn’t about to back off to make Cole more comfortable. He let his stare make the point that he expected an honest answer.
    “We went to dinner.”
    “Where?” Klayman was now making notes.
    “Spezie.”
    “In Rockville?”
    “No, the one downtown, Connecticut and L.”
    “I didn’t know there was one in town. And?”
    “What? You want to know what we ate?”
    “I want to know what you did the rest of the evening.”
    “We—we went back to her apartment and—you know, we screwed.”
    “A happy screw?”
    He laughed. “Yeah, of course it was.”
    “No problems between you.”
    “Nope.”
    “You stay the night?”
    “Nope. Came back here. She—”
    “She what?”
    “She—she wasn’t feeling well and wanted to get a good sleep. I left right after we—”
    “You didn’t see her again after Saturday?”
    “No.”
    “I’ll probably want to talk to you again. You’re not planning to go anywhere, are you?”
    “Hell, no.” He let out a stream of air, shook his head, and looked to a far corner of the workout area.
    “I’ll be back in touch,” Klayman said. He left the building and rejoined Marcia outside.
    “An impressive young man, isn’t he?” she said.
    “Very. I’d like to go back and talk to the two young men in the room she lived in.”
    “All right.”
    When they reached the room, its occupants were playing a computer video game, the music again cranked up to an uncomfortable level. After getting them to lower the volume and to turn away from the computer screen, Klayman said, “Joe Cole says he talked to you after his date with Nadia Zarinski over the weekend.”
    “He said that?”
    “Yeah. What did he tell you?”
    The roommates looked at each other before one said, “He was bellyaching like he always does about Nadia.”
    “He was angry with her?”
    The other roommate guffawed. “Angry? He was boiling, a volcano erupting.”
    “Over what?”
    “Over Nadia.”
    “Yeah, but what had she done to make him so mad?”
    The second roommate cocked his head and asked, “You sure Joe said he’d talked with us?”
    “Go ask him,” Klayman said, confident they wouldn’t.
    “She was always seeing other guys. Not that Joe was serious about her, like marriage or anything. Nobody would want to marry somebody like Nadia. But—”
    “Why do you say that?” Klayman asked. He looked to Marcia, whose discomfort with the conversation was obvious.
    “Because she was a round heels,” the student said. “Sleeping around with everybody. I mean, that’s good for fun, but serious? Nah. Joe wasn’t serious about her.”
    “So why did he get mad if he wasn’t serious?”
    “Because she goes out with him, like, you know, to a fancy restaurant and all, like that, and then she hops in the sack with somebody else who doesn’t